Ilaria's head had drooped over his; her eyes wandered blindly over the ground. Then a warm drop fell to the stone at her feet.
During his recital the very soul in Francesco seemed to havewithered with dread, and he seemed to shrivel up bodily and to grow feeble and old and wilted, as a leaf that the frost has touched.
"The memory pains you," she said at last.
He bit his lips.
"Deem you, I forget when I am silent? But it is not the thing itself that haunts me! It is the fact that I have lost the power over myself—"
"You have suffered—"
"It is the fact that I have come to the end of my courage,—to the point where I find myself a coward!"
"Surely there is a limit to what one may bear—"
"And he who has once reached that limit never knows when he may reach it again!"
He looked up with a sudden piteous catching of the breath.
"What will you do?" she spoke after a pause.
He held her hands in a close, passionate clasp. A silence that seemed to have no end had fallen about them.
"My allotted task," he said at last, in a voice more dead than alive.
"No,—no,—no—!" she started up suddenly. "Cannot you see,—will you never understand—oh! the bitterness, the misery of it all!"
She clung to him with all her might.
"Come away with me! What have you to do with this dead world of priests and monks! They are full of the dust of bygone ages! Come out of this plague-ridden Church,—come with me into the sunlight! I love you—I have always loved you,—always—"
She bent blindly towards him.
"Take me away from here,—Francesco,—take me away from here! Since I came here my feet seem to have grown heavy with this lotus-laden air. At times it sweeps over melike desperation,—I lose the faculty of thinking, I lose the power over myself!"
"I thought you were at Astura!" he said tentatively, the affair in the Red Tower flashing through his consciousness.
She gave a quick start.
"I am a woman, and I stand alone! I have lived in hell ever since I set foot in Astura. Almost have I lost the courage to look life in the face. How I have wanted you!" she continued, with a wan, wistful smile. "Ever I see you standing against the background of a great silence, a silence that engulfs, that maddens, that kills! And you will go from me, leave me a prey to this gray, suffocating loneliness, which hovers as a pall over my soul! I am nothing to Raniero! He seeks his pleasures elsewhere! The lure of the body drove him to me,—it has vanished,—thank God even for that! I should die in his embrace. He knows that I loathe him, that my soul spurns him! And he knows that I love you! Yet, though he has forfeited every right, human and divine, he grudges my love to another. For days and days he left me alone within the gray walls of Astura, until in a fit of desperation I left one night, and came here, to forget. His insults began in Rome. He went so far as to bring his mistress to the Frangipani palace. I have heard it whispered there is a curse on Astura. 'Astura—mala terra,—maledetta!' A beggar uttered these words, whom Raniero struck for obstructing his path, on the day when we arrived!"
A sudden blood-red cloud seemed to come before Francesco's eyes. With a voice bare of intonation, he recited his own adventure in the Red Tower, voicing his suspicions and fears.
Ilaria betrayed no surprise.
"He has never forgiven Fonté Gaia," she said, with drooping head. "And yet he was untrue to me even then! From that hour matters began to grow worse. Recklessly he castthe last semblance of decorum to the winds. When I protested against living under the same roof with his mistress, he smilingly brought me to Astura, leaving me, as he said, in undisturbed possession. My youth destroyed, my soul poisoned, I accepted my fate! I am the lady of the Frangipani! Sold, and bought, and paid for!"
Ilaria had made mere truth of the matter, neither justifying nor embellishing. Her clear, bleak words were the more pathetic for their very simpleness.
With a great cry, he took her in his arms, kissed her dusky tresses, kissed her flower-soft face. The dimmed sunlight, falling in upon them, enveloped them as with a halo.
"And you are happy here?" he spoke at last.
She gave a shrug.
"Here as elsewhere it is a phantom scene," she said, with her wan smile. "But if the fellowship of phantoms be ordained, it is well that they be like those of Naples, radiant."
"Am I too, then, a phantom like the rest?"
Like an echo a voice said:
"A phantom—like the rest."
"And is he—a phantom too?"
She looked up into his eyes.
"Raniero—"
"That other—"
Her face was very pale.
"Why do you dwell on him?"
"Are you not Queen of Phantoms,—Proserpina,—Lady of Shadows, you—as in the masque at Avellino?"
She shivered in his arms. He pressed her more closely to his heart.
"It was a long time ago!"
"And then as now you moved in a masque, in which I have no part."
A long silence enfolded them. She nestled close to him.
"I am tired,—very tired," she crooned, as a child about to fall asleep. "Francesco, help me to forget the years! I am afraid!"
"Afraid?"
"Of myself! Sometimes I dare not be alone at night! No,—no,—it is not that! The inner darkness! There is no weeping there,—only silence,—silence,—and the gathering gloom!"
She held his hands in her own.
"But for this," she cried with passionate pressure, "I should long have cursed God and died—"
Her voice died away in the empty stillness without response.
"It is peace I crave," she said wearily, "a peace, such as broods over a sunset world!"
"The peace of a dying day!" he replied. "The peace I seek is of a day that stoops not to evening."
"And this peace,—have you found it?"
Her eyes were fixed gravely on his own.
"I am as one who gropes in twilight by a path half seen, towards a goal he does not know. Not for me the peace of the goal! But there is peace also of the quest: a peace I would not forego!"
They had arisen and walked for a time in silence, seeking the remoter regions of the garden. The softened siesta lights gave to the distant hills an aspect of pearl and jasper.
It was drawing towards sunset; red banners streaked the amethyst of the western sky.
A saffron mist enveloped the curves of Vesuvius, shot with gold and crimson, merging in dusky purple. In the plains the fertile fields reclaimed round the base of Castiglioné gleamed russet with vines, gray with olives. Beyond the grim walls of distant Astura stretched the chalk-lands of Torre del Greco.
As they walked side by side, Francesco felt the rhythmic life in Dana's body. The wan, appealing face was close tohis. An instant, and the passion of the sky leaped into it. Theirs was the calm of a still pool, which hovers till the wind breaks it into the myriad agitations of life. He drew her towards him; her head resting on his shoulder, as if there she had found a home.
The evening star shone out in the fading sky.
The dusk was travelling towards the night.
Creation shivered towards a deeper dream.
The summer moon had risen, shedding its magic light over the Gulf of Naples.
The very soul of Francesco was thrilled by the harmony around him; the harmony in the moon's golden trail, which fell upon the waters, a blazing path, reaching from Posilippo to the rim of the horizon, harmony in the soft murmur of the sea, and the light breeze which carried, together with the salt freshness of the sea-air, sweet perfumes from the shores of Sorento with their lemon and orange groves; harmony in the silvery curves of Vesuvius, wrapped in luminous mists, its rugged cone emitting a white smoke, which trailed along the upper zones of the air, the summit of the mountain flaring up from time to time, like dying embers consecrated to the gods, the gods who had died, had risen again, and had again expired.
"How wondrous lovely the night!" Francesco at last turned to his silent companion. "All nature seems as one magic blossom—"
"My blossom-season is past," she answered very lightly.
"It is always blossom-season where Proserpina treads," said Francesco, his eyes fixed on the face he loved so well.
"You look almost as you did, when we were both happy."
"Is it so long ago? Yes, I am old, Ilaria. Our youth seems far, far away!"
"Perhaps I too am not old enough, to be young! Our youth—" she paused with a sob.
Francesco gazed at her solicitously.
"Even here?"
She gave him a wan, small smile.
"Just now, one might forget!"
"It is a great art, to forget," said Francesco tenderly. "You need it, Ilaria! What sufferings have been yours!"
She returned his look.
He understood.
Ilaria saw the pain written on his brow, as he looked at her with tenderness undisguised. She felt his spirit lying openly before her, as when they were both at the Court of Avellino.
"From the look on your forehead," she said softly, "you have lived long in your cell, since last we met! So it was meant, I think, from the beginning!"
"Assuredly so it was meant," he replied. "But I am very sorrowful, for I see not what was meant for you!"
She smiled at him, as if to reassure.
"If Fate has guided my life ill, not yours the fault," she said soothingly.
In her, reserve still obtained, yet without a trace of her late perplexing defiance. Asperity had given way to a great gentleness.
"Yet," Francesco hesitated,—"I am tormented by one thought: that for you it had perchance been better, if—"
He paused with drooping eyes, then continued:
"I could not profit by the dispensation of Clement and remain a true man. But you—" and again he paused.
A flash of her old-time perverseness lighted up Ilaria's sad eyes.
"Why pause?" she asked, arching her brow. "You mean that which is moral disaster for one, might be salvation for the other? And that, since my salvation should be dearer to you than your own—"
She broke out into quizzical mirth. But she was swiftly grave again, though tremulous.
"I, too, have lost myself in the quest of happiness," she said, clasping and unclasping her white fingers. "Dread and desire have beaten me hither and thither! Great waves have tossed me! On the very day of your departure from Avellino the Viceroy asked me whom I would wed! Your name leaped to my lips. I told him I would have none other. Even as I spoke the dread seized me! I said to myself: this thing can never be! Then you went away—and I was engulfed in darkness. When we met at Rome I realized what I had done! Yet in the very effort to keep you far, I drew you near! Thus Fate had willed it! When we met at Fonté Gaia, I knew what in one sunset of Avellino I had merely dreamed: my love for you lived—in all my life the one abiding light. Longing and horror racked me! She is cold, and foul, and false, that White Lady—and the gifts she offers turn to poison in the grasp. But it was that other who conquered,—your White Lady,—not mine! She was ever a generous enemy, and in taking you from me, she has given me back my love!"
She had been looking at him with wide piteous eyes, even as a child might do. On a sudden she covered her face, dropped into a seat among the bays and myrtles, and broke into wild weeping.
The strong sense of bondage came back with a fuller force as though to menace her with the fateful realism of her lot. A hand seemed to sweep down and wave her back with a meaning so sinister that she had the feeling of standing on the brink of a mysterious sea, whose waves sang to her a song of peril, of misery and desire in the dim green twilight of some coral dungeon. The lure of the unknown beat upon her eyes, while love and hate, like attendant spirits, beckoned her onward with a weird, perpetual clamor.
Francesco tried in vain to soothe her, calling her by all the endearing names of the past, and pressing her closely to his heart.
"I do not understand," she cried, sobbing convulsively. "I have wished no one ill! Ever have I desired only fairness and love, and fullness of sweet life. And the beauty I seek is befouled by my seeking, my love has stained my beloved; and when I clutch at life, life crumbles within my grasp. Wherein has my quest been wrong?"
"Not wrong," he said unsteadily—"not wrong,—I trust!"
She looked at him bewildered.
"I, too, would turn from that agonizing God upon the Cross to paths where roses bloom," Francesco replied, heavy-hearted. "I have been walking amid shadows, and I have lost the way."
She caught at his hand and drew it piteously to her lips, but made no attempt to retain it.
"I am that Proserpina who has lost the spring," she said, raising her haunting eyes to his. "Yet one comfort is left me still,—one stay, that shall not fail!"
"And that?"
There was a strange expression about her face, but she was silent.
A shudder seized him with the swift suspicion of her meaning.
"You shall not!" he cried almost roughly. "You shall not! I, too,—did I give way to that fierce longing,—you shall not yield to that crawling weakness!"
But Ilaria interrupted him.
"Oh! my dear, I meant not that!" she said. "Of weakness I might reck little, of the hurt to you I should reck much. There is that in my heart for you which shall keep me safe henceforth from what would grieve you!"
"What is it then?" he asked relieved. "The comfort,—the stay,—of which you spoke?"
She smiled through her tears; the old-time smile.
"I do not see your life," he said anxiously. "What is it—what shall it be? Till that be known to me, Ilaria, I shall not know rest or peace. You are beautiful,—too beautiful for this licentious court! Here you cannot remain—alone!"
"I fear the twilight," she said, with a shudder. "There is but one goal for me, and, when the hour comes, you shall lead me there. Proserpina will turn Lady of Shadows in very truth, and move veiled through her rose garden."
"But why must this thing be?" he queried with a choking sensation. "I, too, have sinned—"
"Of sin I know nothing," said Ilaria mournfully, "I apprehend neither the word, nor the thing!"
"Then why this last extremity?"
"Will you not understand?" she interposed petulantly. "Your presence here has shown me once for all that I may not continue to walk in the old way; I may not walk in yours, and I would not have you walk in mine! You wavered towards it of late! Once upon a time I should have rejoiced; now my spirit is full of fear."
She crept close to him and looked up at him with tremulous lids.
He caught her to him with all the old-time love in his eyes. All fears, all misgivings, all doubts of the woman he loved, were utterly blotted out in their embrace, and over Ilaria's features there flitted the gleam of a long forgotten happiness.
Her look was far away. Of a sudden she turned to Francesco.
"Will you remain at Naples?"
He gave a shrug.
"Days—weeks—who can tell? A Ghibelline victory may turn the tide."
"I have something to say to you," she said, her face veryclose to his. "I have long wished to say it: beware of Raniero!"
"He caught her to him with all the old-time love"
"I have done him no wrong!"
She made a gesture as one throwing up a libation.
"Fonté Gaia!"
He felt her breath fanning his cheek.
Seized with a sudden madness he threw his arms about her, and kissed her.
Where the roads branched off they parted, after a long passionate embrace. Ilaria returned to the palace, while Francesco bent his footsteps towards the bay, shimmering in the light of the higher risen moon.
He heard her go singing through the garden, a soft chant d'amour that would have gone wondrously to flute and cithern. It died away slowly amid the trees like an elf's song coming from woodlands in the moonlight.
His soul was sobbing within him. He felt his purpose, his resolutions waver. The crisis of his life had come. Alone with Ilaria at Naples! Raniero away,—indulging his lusts!
He had feared this meeting, feared it above all things in heaven or earth!
Again they were abroad, the gods of yore. They rode the wind; they laughed in the far reaches of the sky; they whispered in his heart.
To love her! To possess her!
The thought had suddenly leaped into his brain, taking its first clearly defined form, recoiling upon him, dazzling his eyes.
For this he had lived; for this he had suffered!
And now?
A deeper question came, like a wind in a fog; a fearsome thing. Why should this love be sin? This love,—the one pure emotion in all his life?
In the spiritual darkness which encompassed Francesco, the fire of his old love for Ilaria had leaped high upon the altarof his sacrifice. For her he had kept himself pure, for her he had starved his soul, while his love smouldered in the dark chambers of his heart.
For hours Francesco was as a man possessed, moving through them drearily, as through crowding phantoms, struggling to suppress an imperious craving that tormented him for release.
It was late when he retraced his steps towards his inn.
Gigantic cypresses bordered the way, ranged like dark torch-bearers at a funeral. Their entwined tips, continually caught by the wind from the sea, remained bent like heads drooped in sorrow. White statues of gods gleamed spectre-like in the dark shades. In the laurel thickets glow-worms flickered like funeral tapers. The heavy scent of the magnolias recalled the odor of balsam used for anointing the dead. The waters of the fountain, trickling from an overhanging rock, fell into the sea, drop by drop, like silent tears, as though a nymph were weeping in the cave above, bewailing her sisters, some dark Elysium, the subterranean groves of shadows, the burial grounds of dead gods.
But even sleep brought only one persistent vision to Francesco: a reach of laughing waters, now turquoise, now sapphire, now upheaving into a mighty translucent wave, that curled swiftly towards him, and, quivering within, the face of Ilaria, upturned to his own.
AN INTERLUDE
MEANTIME, the atmosphere of this secular court was not distasteful to Francesco. The love of poetry and the arts which had made Naples in the twelfth century the literary centre of Europe, still lingered; and he found pleasant intercourse on lines along which he had long been lonely.
Of Ilaria he saw little. She carried herself with a strange, new dignity and seemed to avoid him even more sedulously than he had planned to avoid her. He heard her spoken of as among the chief beauties of the court. The Regent, it was said, had shown her marks of especial favor, the more noteworthy as the Frangipani were on the side of the empire, fighting against Clement and Charles of Anjou. But his only opportunity of seeing her was at the court functions, which it was his duty to attend. To men of Francesco's temperament the absent has a more constraining force than the present; the dream-Ilaria, with her wavering smile, had borne, it would seem, more intimate relations to his life than the woman he watched from afar. But his restlessness increased with the certainty that Ilaria avoided him; a circumstance their meeting had not led him to fear.
Thus a week dragged on.
The African wind, which carries with it clouds of hot sand from the depths of the Sahara, was raging in the upper regionsof the air. On earth there was still absolute calm. The leaves of the palm and the branches of the mimosa hung motionless; the sea alone was agitated. Huge, formless ridges swelled up here and there, dashing themselves against the shore. The west was shrouded in dense gloom, and the sun, in the metallic, cloudless haze, was seen dimly, as through a smoked opal.
The Castello of Astura in the distant plains of Torre del Greco shone white against the black smoke that rose from Vesuvius as from some mighty furnace, spreading out in the shape of a long cloud from Castellamaré to Posilippo. For weeks the mountain had displayed a sinister activity, and at night the red fires were visible far away, over land and sea, like the glow of some great subterranean furnace. The peaceful altar of the gods had been transformed into the terrible torch of the Eumenides.
There were dire forebodings of coming disaster in the air and in the winds. At Torre del Greco penitential processions made the rounds of the sun-baked streets, with lighted candles, subdued chanting and loud sobbing. In Resina and Portici dull terror reigned. And the glare of the August sun had become almost insufferable, as it fell full over the waters to the pencilled line of the southern horizon, where a long circle divided the misty, shimmering dove-color of the Tyrrhene Sea from the hazy skies.
Then, like the knell of doom, the tidings of the fatal battle of Tagliacozzo were wafted to Naples. Conradino's army had been utterly routed. Charles of Anjou was the victor of the day.
The fate of the Swabian youth and that of his companions was still a matter of surmise. They had fled from the battle-field. No one knew the direction of their flight.
And for days Francesco went about as one dazed. The Neapolitans laughed his exhortations to scorn, and seemed toinvite the interdict rather than to submit to the Vulture of Provence.
He was ruminating over the situation, wishing for some inspiration, wishing for Ilaria, and noting idly how the soft siesta lights played upon the sea, when Francesco perceived a little pleasure barque skirting the coast, and heading apparently for his favorite spot,—where he had met Ilaria on coming to Naples. As the breeze impelled it nearer, music floated over the waters. A few moments, and he descried within the boat three of the most charming of the younger women of the court, with their attendant cavaliers. He eyed the little boat longingly, as it approached like some swift sprite of the sea. It was at hand now, moored to the tiny wharf, and one of the women called out gaily:
"Messer Eremito, we have found your cell!"
"And like many hermits," laughed Stefano Maconi, "he appears to welcome the intrusion."
"To be welcomed by Messer Francesco," suggested another, "we should be on the barque which Charon is rowing across the Styx."
Francesco found his tongue at last.
"Beauty should always have precedence over departed souls," he said with a smile. "Is it your pleasure to land and to enliven this solitude?"
"No, but to lure you out upon the waters," said the woman who had spoken.
Francesco, carried away by the spirit of the moment, ran down the marble steps of the terrace and leaped lightly into the boat.
"Violetta made a wager that you would not come,—Petronella that you would," said a third. "As for myself—I was neutral. But my fears were with Violetta."
As the sun sank lower, the wind dropped, and the men bent singing to their oars.
"We were playing a game, Messeré," said the Countess Violetta. "We are trying to decide who is the fairest lady of this court, exclusive, of course,—of us three. If we can agree, we shall plan a surprise for that most lovely one!"
"My vote," said Messer Romano Vivaldi, "is for Madonna Ghisola. The dusk of her hair is as soft as that of the thickest smoke of Vesuvius, and, as in the smoke, there are red reflections in it!"
"Beware of the volcano," laughed Petronella. "A merry beauty for me," she improvised, speaking half verse, half prose like the others. "Rose-white as asphodel blossom, and fragrant as the cyclamen of the hills. What say you to the Contessa Leonora? Who can hear her laugh without remembering what some one has said: 'Laughter is the radiance of the soul?'"
"To my mind," said one of the cavaliers, who had not yet spoken, "the Countess Ilaria Frangipani is the fairest woman of the court."
The eyes of Stefano Maconi flashed emphatic assent.
"She is too sad," objected Violetta, who was the youngest of the party.
"So was the sea beneath the clouds of dawn," said the cavalier. "It sighed of sorrows without end. The clouds melted, and the gray waters brightened to turquoise, but whether under clouds or sun, the sea is a mystery."
"She has the grace of the swaying wave," assented Petronella.
"And its light in her eyes," added Camilla.
"The lady is fair," acknowledged Messer Romano, "but too unapproachable for me!"
Startled, Francesco saw, or fancied he saw, a complacent smile flit across the countenance of Stefano Maconi.
"What thinks Messer Francesco of her beauty?" asked
Violetta. "I believe that each new age sees men and women fairer than the last."
"I think, that cannot be," said the Countess Petronella, naively. "Was never woman so fair as Madama Elena of Troy, and she lived before the coming of our Saviour."
"I agree with Madonna Violetta," said Francesco dreamily. "Gazing at Madonna Ilaria I think there is come into the world something strange and new, revealed to us to our joy and our undoing!"
The sun had set. The boatmen were singing together.
"Non senti mai Achillé,Per Pulisena bella,Le cocenti favilléQuant' io senti per quella."Udendo sua favellaAngelica é venozza,Parlar si amorosaIn su la fresca erbetta."
"Non senti mai Achillé,Per Pulisena bella,Le cocenti favilléQuant' io senti per quella.
"Udendo sua favellaAngelica é venozza,Parlar si amorosaIn su la fresca erbetta."
"The beauty of this coast," said Francesco, speaking low, "is as the beauty of woman. It transcends all I have imagined, yet is it ever alien. I have felt it in Rome, but not so strongly. In Umbria, in Tuscany all is more pure, more distant, yet more clear. The eye is drawn afar to where earth meets sky; here it seeks to draw all to itself. It is a beauty unhallowed: The triumph of the Pagan World!"
"Is there a city in Italy more Catholic than Naples?" protested Violetta, while the others joined in a chorus of protestation.
"Where in Europe shall you find more priests?" asked Stefano Maconi, shrugging his shoulders. "Where shall you find more churches?"
Francesco had been musing. Now the spirit of contradiction was upon him.
"Even in your churches," he said suddenly, turning to Camilla, "I find something strange. They are sumptuous indeed; yet there steals over me a fearsome feeling, as if the worship were given not to the Deity that is, but to deities long dead,—or worse than dead!"
A slight shudder ran over one or two of the hearers; the boatmen were singing softly.
The stars were out, the boat was nearing the shore. And still the boatmen were singing, as the moon shed her spectral light over the crooning, murmuring waves.
"We are all agreed, are we not, that the Countess Ilaria Frangipani is the fairest?" asked Camilla, as they prepared to land.
"Allow me," said Stefano Maconi, "to be responsible for the proposed surprise. It shall, with your pleasure, take the form of a Festa in the groves of Circé!"
"It will be fair weather to-morrow!" said Violetta. "We shall all be there!"
After they had departed Francesco passed swiftly to and fro along the terrace.
Strange feelings were at work within him. Love, hatred, jealousy were contending for the mastery. He hated the oily cavalier with the smooth, pleasant temper; he hated the man who dared aspire to Ilaria's love. To Raniero he gave not even a thought. He had never felt jealous of the Frangipani. But now Ilaria's name was on the wind! The sea shouted it; the flowers exhaled it. It floated on the night-air; the moon and the stars seemed to whisper it. Ilaria! Ilaria! He was once more abandoned to the older gods!
"I shall not be there!" he murmured to himself, thinking of the Festa. Yet, when the morning came, he was among the first to arrive.
THE HILL OF VENUS
SOMEby land, and some by sea, the revellers took their morning way along the coast towards the ruins of ancient Baiae. Francesco was on horseback, a friend having furnished him with an excellent mount. As he cantered on, the road continually revealed the far-sparkling sea. A flock of brilliant butterflies dipped and poised on the waters,—pleasure boats bound for the tryst. Ilaria! Ilaria! She and he were moving by different ways to the same goal.
Steeds proved swifter than sails that morning; the horsemen arrived half an hour before the boats. The place was a lonely wonder. The sloping hillsides, broken by the green hollows of an ancient amphitheatre, rose gently from the beach. From the turf, strewn with wild hyacinth, cyclamen, Star of Bethlehem and tiny fleurs-de-lys, great columns, half embedded in the ground, raised ivy-mantled shafts, now broken, now crowned with Corinthian capitals, which peered through trailing vines. Choice marbles, their rose or white mellowed to gold, lay scattered here and there, the surfaces, fluted or bevelled, still gleaming with the polish of by-gone centuries. Below and above the amphitheatre mysterious masonry broke the climbing slope. The ruins extended to the very verge of the sea.
Francesco ran down the bank as the first boat drew near.Under an awning of silk, shot with green and blue and gold, sat Ilaria, the Countess Violetta and Stefano Maconi. Violetta was rippling with joyous laughter. Ilaria smiled and the beauty of the day found its meaning. She had thrown aside the misty veil, with which she was wont to envelop herself. Her gown, or so Francesco thought, was the same which Proserpina had worn, in the "Triumph of Amor." At least, the same strange broideries shone among its folds.
She stepped lightly ashore. Her fingers rested on Francesco's hand and her eyes accepted his adoring look with a strange inscrutable expression.
"We have been sailing over marvels," cried Violetta wide-eyed. "Below the clear green waves rise palaces! We saw great white columns and a pavement of mosaics. Did we not, Madonna Ilaria?"
"Yes," said Ilaria, dreamily. "Had they not quivered in the light, we could have traced the pattern!"
"The palaces of the sea ladies," Violetta exclaimed gleefully. "I thought I saw one, but she turned out to be a fish!"
"The home of strange beings, at any rate," mused Ilaria,—"of flowers that are alive! Did you see that long blue ribbon sway and beckon to us?"
Ilaria's gravity and pallor seemed to have vanished with the mists of morning. She was flushed and gay,—almost too gay, Francesco thought. A startled quietude, as of one expectant, was upon her.
"I have bidden you to a land of enchantment," laughed Stefano Maconi as they climbed upwards. "We are still within the power of the sea, as you perceive," he added, when the company paused by the half-buried columns below the amphitheatre.
"It is true," said Francesco, pausing by a half-buried shaft. "The stone is fretted by the waves. See the clustered barnacles and tiny shells clinging half-way up!"
A party of cavaliers and their ladies met them on this spot.
As they exchanged greetings, all studied the strange sight.
"Probably," reflected a young page of the court, "it was the doing of Messer Vergilio."
"He had great power hereabout," asserted Andrea Ravignano, "and was a mighty clerk of necromancy. Perhaps it was he who built all these marvels!"
"It was the old Roman folk that built them, ages ago," said another. "A city rose here once, a marvel indeed, as these ruins tell. For their pleasure men built it, and here they lived and throve. And evil livers were they all, and slaves to the foul fiends, their gods!"
"But how did the city sink into the sea?" asked Violetta.
"That was the work of Messer Saint Paul," replied the other. "He landed here and preached the Cross of our Saviour, and when men would not heed but spat upon the cross and defied it, he laid the land under a curse, and it sank to the depths of the sea!"
"And when the waves had done their work,"—it was Ilaria, speaking dreamily, "they flowed back, and the ruins rested on a gentle hill. But forever and ever do they remember the sea!"
She sighed a little.
"The slope on which we sit is hollow within," ventured the youthful page. "Behind us is many a love-grotto, tunnelled deep and far. The country folk, when they run the harrow, find great walls. And so none dare come here of nights: strange things are seen!"
"Perhaps the waters will rise again some day and swallow Naples and the court, and we shall turn into sea-folk all," Ilaria said, laughing a little wildly. "Subjects of Lady Venus we should be. She was Queen of the Sea, I've heard!"
"Though Terce is hardly passed, such talk is not wise," said some one.
And two or three crossed themselves.
But as the light words drifted on, dim vistas of thought, at the end of which immemorial things were gleaming, had opened to Francesco.
Violetta had been deftly weaving a green garland of ivy.
"Dream no more, fairest," she turned smiling to Ilaria. "Tell me rather what flowers to weave into your chaplet. Of no strange blooms of the sea shall it be wrought, but, at your will, of roses or the small fior-da-lisa!"
"He who, as I, loves best the sea, loves best the rose," replied Ilaria smiling. "While he who climbs the height adores the lily!"
She glanced, as she spoke at Francesco, whose gaze had never for a moment abandoned her. Never had she seemed so fair to him, so utterly adorable, stirring in his soul the slumbering fires of desire.
Violetta quickly finished her wreath of eglantine, and dropped it lightly on Ilaria's brow.
"Why fear we ghosts in this radiant air?" laughed she.
"Perhaps we are the ghosts,—ghosts of our former selves," suggested Ilaria.
"No phantom heart beats in my bosom," laughed Stefano Maconi.
And a look of meaning, or so Francesco felt, passed between them.
"Fair phantom, let us tread a measure!" pleaded Violetta. "What was this green level made for, if not for the beating of gentle feet?"
"And when the measure is over," said Francesco in an undertone, as they rose, "perhaps Madonna Ilaria will graciously vouchsafe me a few moments?"
She nodded assent; but he could see her eyelids quiver, and her breath came fast. The measure finished, Stefano Maconi at once proposed a new diversion, from which neithercould escape, and time wore on, while the light grew more intense and the sky burned a deeper blue. Ill at ease, Francesco withdrew from the pastimes at last and climbed the hill behind the amphitheatre. He was displeased and nervous. Ilaria, he was sure, shrank from Stefano Maconi; yet was there not some secret bond between them?
Would Ilaria come to him? He trembled, as in Avellino of old, and his heart beat faster at the thought.
The hill was richly draped in ferns and swaying vines. Idly he pushed aside a mass of ivy: a passage opened behind, deep-vaulted, paved with broken fragments of mosaic. Stalactites dripped from the roof, through the verdure of thick maiden-hair fern. The gloom looked grateful. Francesco stepped within and, looking out on the blue day from the waving green frame-work, saw Ilaria and Stefano Maconi approaching, engaged in eager talk. She was flushed and bore herself haughtily.
Francesco stepped quietly out into the light, unnoticed by Ilaria's companion. Ilaria evidently saw him at once. She paused and dismissed the other, regardless of his somewhat insistent protests. With half-ironic salutation she turned down the hill. Whether or no Stefano had caught sight of Francesco, as he went, was difficult to say.
Ilaria came towards the grotto, trailing her draperies, her brow troubled and sad beneath the gay chaplet.
"The sun is hot,—one craves shelter," she said lightly, yet with a tremor in her voice.
Francesco, without replying, lifted the ivy curtain and with a mute gesture invited her to enter.
They stood in the dusky gloom, speechless, hidden from each other, till their gaze became accustomed to the shade.
He was helplessly unable to break the silence. Fear, joy, desire, doubt were tossing him. The breath came fast.
She raised her arms and caught her white throat.
"How cool it is, how sweet!" she said. "At Avellino," and she glanced at him half shyly, "you would never take me to your grotto!"
"Ah! But this grotto," he tried to speak as lightly as she, "we have found together!"
"Together!" she reflected, looking away from him. "It is a word we have not often had occasion to use,—you and I."
"Why might we not in the days to come?"
The words were on his lips; he held them back.
Ilaria waited, her hand pressed to her side, her look full of mingled tenderness and dread.
As he kept silence, she sighed, almost, it would seem, with relief.
"I wish to explore the cave," she said suddenly. "Come with me, if you like!"
And with quick steps she started into the darkness.
"Take care! Take care, Lariella!" cried Francesco, unconsciously using the familiar diminutive, forgotten so long ago.
She took no heed and he hurried after her, terror-stricken, he knew not why. She kept in advance, moving swiftly and lightly over the dark uneven ground. For a short distance the dusk deepened, then a sudden light, shining from a crack in the vaulting, revealed in startling contrast a great blackness by the side of which there gleamed something weird, ghost-like.
Ilaria screamed and stumbled. The passage, widening beneath her feet, broke downwards into a pool of the waters of Styx. A lost stair had betrayed her.
Francesco, speeding forward, caught her garments, drew her back. She staggered and yielded to his arms. They leaned together against the wall of the grotto. The earth had fallenaway a little at the shock, revealing in the uncertain light the white figure of a woman.
They both stared at it, holding their breath.
The image stood embedded in the rocky cavity, whither some force had in past ages carried her from her old position, for she had evidently presided over the Piscina, or the bath of some rich Roman, who rejoiced in her Greek fairness. The face was free, but soil and mould had given it a half-sinister expression. The limbs, so far as visible,—and the earth in falling away had left one white side of the body entirely bare,—were perfect.
Ilaria struggled to free herself from Francesco's embrace and sank, half fainting, at the statue's base.
"The peril is over," said Francesco, and echoes filled the whole cavern with murmuring. "Dearest, be not afraid! Look at me!"
As her head drooped, he knelt beside her, half distraught, and rubbed her wrists and forehead with water from the pool.
She opened her eyes and smiled at him, as a child might.
"Fonté Gaia!" she whispered.
The words had been in his own mind.
Lifting her hand, she touched and stroked the marble, and the awe grew in her eyes.
"Feel!" she said. "This is not marble! It is very flesh, though turned to stone!"
And she shuddered.
"Only a statue, dearest!" he answered soothingly. "Around Naples, they say, the earth is full of such!"
"It is the White Lady!"
She had risen now and regained her self-control, and she spoke with unwonted dignity and calm.
"It is the White Lady," she repeated, "but you know, you have never consented to her spells. She rules here in the dusk! How you tremble! There is no need! Sunlight foryou is but a few paces away! See, I will go with you to the entrance of the grotto!"
In truth a strange tremor had seized him. He stood as if unable to leave the spot. She was looking on his face with anxious eyes.
"Doubtless," he said at last, and despised himself as he spoke, "you would prefer other company than mine in the presence of your White Lady!"
She raised her white hands to her throat again, and laughed, a laugh which the vaults re-echoed as a sob.
"Forgive,—forgive! I am cruel!" cried Francesco. "I know not what I say!"
"You are overheated," she said. "Bathe your brows, as you have bathed mine. It is true, I did not find the touch so cooling."
"The waters of Lethé," said Francesco very slowly. "Shall I bathe my brows in them indeed? Already, simply standing by them, I think I have forgotten many things. I have a better thought. Will you drink of them with me, Ilaria? It would not be the first time we have tasted of the same cup in the presence of Venus!"
Was he mistaken? Or, in the glimmering light, did he see a shadow passing over the flower-soft face?
She did not reply, but softly stroked his hair.
Her touch burned, electrified him. For a moment he submitted to the sensation, then, as her soft, white hands stole around his throat, he folded her in a close embrace and kissed her passionately on her lips.
From the waters came the swinging rhythm of the Barcarole.